By Sherwood Ross

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The president of a veterans’ anti-war  organization said the American public has been “brainwashed” to hate Iran and pressure to prevent the U.S. from attacking it will have to come from outside the U.S.

“I don’t think  we can get mass protests going against Iran here,” said Leah Bolger, president of Veterans For Peace in a speech Thursday to its 27th annual national convention here. ”The American public is brainwashed. The American public is saying ‘We hate Iran,” Bolger said.

“We have to reach out to the global community and get them to put pressure on the U.S. to prevent war against Iran,” she told an audience of cheering veterans at the Marriott Biscayne Bay hotel. “We see how the U.S. sanctions are an act of war against Iran, a country which has done no harm to anyone.”

American are brainwashed, Bolger said, because the mass media has framed Syria and Iran “as terrorist nations out to get us” and making wars against them as “necessary.”

Bolger went on to say, “The Iranian people have done nothing illegal. They have every right to develop nuclear power. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty(NPT).”

By contrast, she continued, “Israel has never let the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) inspect their facilities. The best way to discourage nuclear weapons is for the U.S. and Israel to dismantle their own. We are bellicose and activist nations.”

The veterans cheered when Bolger said WFP is the only veterans organization that has called for the abolition of war. The group has also called for dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO).

Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985 and has approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every U.S. state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans' organization calling for the abolishment of war.